I was watching a video of mariusz pudzianowski in the strongman competitions, and realized that much of what they do seems to be perfect paleo workouts.  Crossfit is great and I'm a big fan of it myself, but let's be honest, I'm pretty sure early man never bothered doing 100 pushups or bodyweight squats as fast as he could.  However, what he likely did do was pick up heavy objects, be it logs, rocks, or a carcass, and move with it.  Or lift huge rocks to help build some shelter.  Or try to deadlift/squat a large piece of debris that fell and pinned the leg of his mate/child/friend/tribe member.  Or a dozen other things, but either way it seems to me that strongman style workouts are great paleo exercises.

Here's a decent video showing some of the stuff they do, in case some of you aren't familiar with the strongman competitions.  Don't mind the music, it's uhh...  Well, I certainly hit the mute button.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYNJITf9brg&feature=related

I'm making my first batch of pemmican, and I'm a little worried about it tasting bland, so I put a little sea salt, cracked pepper, basil and oregano on the beef as it's drying.  Will this negatively affect my pemmican?  I'm not putting any berries or anything in it, I want to stick with just animal parts, but like I said, I'm afraid of it being bland.  Also, I used a london broil for the meat.  Is this a "recomended" cut, or is there one that's better (leaner/less expensive)?  I don't have a ton of cash and grass fed beef is expensive.

Well, today is a great day to start on the path to raw paleoness.  I just finished my honeymoon last weekend, and this morning I got my blood test results, so I have a good solid "before" picture to work with.

Okay, as of the time of this posting, I'm 28, male, in the Army, 5'7" and about 138 pounds, athletic build, roughly 7-8% bodyfat for all of my life that I can remember.  I have been eating kinda paleo for the past year or so, but due to my recent marriage I've been eating pretty crappy (lots of pasta) to save money for the marriage/honeymoon.  I haven't had milk in a long time, and the only dairy I have is some ice cream here and there, and some cheese on my eggs in the morning.  My overall health is good and solid, but I do have a few issues that have crept in, and now I realize they are likely at least partially due to eating grains, dairy, etc.  My hopes are to eradicate or at least help these small issues.

1.  receding gumline.  Not very much, and it's also likely attributed to me brushing a little over-enthusiastically, but it still bothers me to have that at this age.
2.  Eczema.  I only have a few spots, but they're there.  Now I see that one of the causes are wheat allergies.

3.  My blood pressure is good, but I've noticed that it's gone up 10 or so points over the past year.  That worries me.

4.  ADD.  I'm currently in a military school that is pretty mentally taxing, and I simply cannot pay attention enough on my own, so while I am doing well, it's because I'm on adderal. 

Here's some of the results of my recent blood test.  I'm just going to use the abbreviations used on the paper.

WBC          4.9
RBC CNT     5.6
HGB          16.2
Cholesterol   195
Triglyceride   112
HDL              58
LDL Calculated   115
CHOL/HDL   3.4
Glucose         102
BUN             20  (can anyone tell me what BUN is?)
CREAT         1.0
NA+            139.0
K                  4.8
CA                 9.9
CO2               30
ALT              23


Overall pretty good scores, although my ALT (whatever that is) is on the bottom end of the normal range, and my LDL is a little high.  I'm glad to see my fasting glucose level is 102, from what I understand that's fairly normal.  Hypoglycemia runs in my family, and I've noticed that I seem to be very sensitive to blood sugar crashes after eating, even a lower carb meal.  I also noticed that I was more emotional and irritable during the past 2 or so months that I was eating much more grains.

***My meal plan***
I will be doing my best to maintain an omnivore style paleo diet, as raw as possible.  Being in the military, I know whenever I deploy I'll be eating cooked food and at times MREs (which are full of grains and sugars) so I will keep a bit of cooked food in my diet to make sure my body can easily digest and handle cooked foods in the even that I am deployed.  So breakfast each morning will be 3 eggs over easy or over medium, some bacon/sausage, and a few pieces of fruit and a glass of water.  Once I get my hands on a big tub of grass fed fat I will be making pemmican for lunch, since that's the easiest way to bring paleo-friendly food with me.  Probably pemmican and maybe an apple.  Until I can make pemmican, I'll probably make some beef jerky (dried at low temperatures) or maybe bring a small blue-rare steak.  Dinner will be meat and a small (1 cup) spinach leaf salad, with a few fresh organic veggies tossed in there.  Here's my thing:  I simply don't like raw, unseasoned meat yet, it doesn't taste good and I have to choke it down.  I'm a good cook and I make and am used to nicely cooked food.  I do believe in raw meat and I want to eat it, I just can't take it yet, so until I can handle fully raw meat, I will probably quickly sear a steak blue rare or less with some light seasoning on it (sea salt, cracked pepper for the most part).  One step at a time.  My wife will be eating pretty much the same way, and 1 or 2 times a week we'll have a glass of red wine with dinner (sorry, I just can't give that up :-) )

I exercise 4 times per week, generally along the lines of crossfit.  No changes there, that will stay the same.

I suck at sleeping, and having to wake up at 4am doesn't help any.  I take melatonin to help me sleep, and stay asleep.  Hopefully my sleep will improve a bit.

So I guess today is day one.  I had to grab a kinda crappy breakfast due to time constraints, but for lunch I just choked down a raw fillet mignon, and am currently munching on a fuji apple.  I usually don't eat entire apples, for some reason I always stop after eating about half.  Probably my body telling me stop, due to the sugar content.  I got a great deal on about 40 pounds of beef the other day, so I'll be eating steak for a while.  The guy said it's grass fed but I'm not sure I believe him, so I'll probably give most of these a real quick sear.  I do have some 100% grassfed beef in the freezer also though, and that I will always try to eat 100% raw.